The Web site through which many College students were supposed to obtain their access codes for course registration was taken offline Nov. 7, causing difficulties for some students who were supposed to register earlier this week.

“What happened was that on Friday we identified a security vulnerability and promptly shut it down,” said Mike McPherson, associate vice president and deputy chief information officer. He noted that Information Technology & Communication officials were concerned the vulnerability could have led to a leak of important information.

Since taking these precautions, “we determined that there is no evidence that data has been improperly released,” McPherson said, adding that “there has been no exposure … but the system is down for now.”

Directors of undergraduate studies and department chairs within the College received word of the shutdown through an e-mail sent by Rachel Most, assistant College dean and director of advising, explained Ron Michener, economics department director of undergraduate studies.

Michener said when he received this e-mail, he obtained a “hard copy of advising codes for the majors” from the registrar and sent an e-mail to students to inform them that if they were economics majors and could not access their codes any other way, they could call and receive their codes after verifying the last four digits of their Social Security number. Michener explained that “the issue is making sure the person is who they say they are.”

Jessica Feldman, English Department director of undergraduate studies, said access codes are available to students who take initiative.
“While it’s been a frustration for students, everyone who has sought the information has gotten it,” she said.

Neither director had heard any word of when the problem may be fixed.

“We are working to get students their codes, but I don’t know if the site will open up again,” Assoc. College Dean Richard Handler said. In general, “we’re not happy,” he said.

Some students also expressed discontent about the technical difficulties.

Third-year College student Christine Johnson received an e-mail with a link to receive her registration code but did not look at it right away. When she did click the link, it took her to a page that stated that the Web site was unavailable.

“I thought it was just me,” Johnson said. “I didn’t know it was a problem that was ubiquitous.”  

When her adviser could not send her code, she had to go to the English undergraduate office.

“It was a little stressful,” Johnson added. “I didn’t want to be unable to sign up for classes.”

Third-year College student Leanne Ryan experienced similar problems in accessing her code.

“I got [my code] a while ago for my economics major,” Ryan explained, noting that “at first it worked, then something malfunctioned.”

Ryan noted, however, that she wrote down the code upon first receiving it and is confident that she will be able to register.

Students, however, are not the only members of the University having problems with the registration system.

Handler pointed out that with the Web site down, advisers are also unable to access students’ codes unless they already created a hard copy.

Advisers’ sudden lack of access to the codes online created problems for some students.

“If the advisers didn’t send [the codes] out by Friday, [the students] had no access to them,” Handler explained. There were few of these cases, though, because most advisers sent out the information earlier, he said. “The only [students] who are having trouble are the ones who didn’t bother to open their e-mail,” he added.

For those students who did miss their registration time or did not preserve a hard copy of their registration code, alternative ways of accessing the Integrated Student Information System are available. These methods differ based on whether or not a student has declared his or her major.

“If non-majors don’t have [their code], they can bring a printed copy of the e-mail that the advisor sent to them to Garrett Hall and a staff member can release the same registration code,” Asst. College Prof. Mary Stegmaier said. “Majors who do not have an advising code should see the major department’s administrative assistant for the registration code. If a student is unable to get code from their major department, [they should] bring some sheet signed by the [administrative assistant of the] department that indicates that our office can release the code.”

She noted that students with two majors only need one registration code, which they can obtain from either of their departments.

Though problems exist with the current registration process, Handler noted the difficulties will not remain when the University switches to a new system in 2009 called the Student Information System. Until then, Handler said students in the College who need their access codes should see their association deans in Garrett Hall as soon as possible.

Two prominent Charlottesville landlords agreed at a meeting yesterday to work with Student Council next fall to encourage students to not rush to sign leases for off-Grounds housing. The joint efforts will include advertising Council’s stance on the issue in various ways and holding forums through which students can learn more about off-Grounds housing from the landlords.

The meeting, which was part of Council’s “Don’t Sign It” campaign, was attended by members of Council’s Building & Grounds Committee, Council President Matt Schrimper, Colin Hood, Safety & Wellness Committee vice-chair, Wade Apartments general manager Wade Tremblay and Woodard Properties owner Keith Woodard.

At the start of the meeting, Woodard explained that when his company began doing business in 1981, the University did not have its housing fair until March. Woodard noted that despite this, “the landlords received calls [from students] in August and September to find places to live.”

These early phone calls encouraged landlords to lease their properties at an earlier date in the year, Woodard said.

Hood attributed today’s panic to sign early to first-year students who do not understand the housing market. This lack of understanding creates a self-induced frenzy to find off-Grounds housing because they believe off-Grounds housing will disappear if they do not act quickly, Tremblay said.

He added that first-year students need to be better educated about the large amounts of housing available off Grounds that is catered toward students.

Nikhil Panda, Building & Grounds Committee vice-chair, said he doubted it would be feasible “to communicate to so many students within such a short amount of time” that it is not necessary to sign leases early. Panda noted that the only solution he could see to the problem is pushing back lease-signing dates to Nov. 1.

Tremblay explained that while he would love to work toward informing students that there are thousands of apartments available in the area, he, along with Woodard, is unwilling to be put into a competitive disadvantage by promising to push back their lease dates to Nov. 1.

Schrimper proposed instead to work with the landlords in order to compromise about a few basic strategies in hopes to subdue students’ eagerness to sign leases early. His first strategy involves not encouraging students to “sign now” through advertising before Nov. 1. Woodard said, though, that any advertisement, with or without the words “sign now,” encourages students to sign early and he questioned how the rule would be enforced among landlords.

Davies explained the “sign now” signs — especially the flashing ones on the leasing companies’ Web sites and their advertisements in The Cavalier Daily — add to the urgency of signing an early lease. Davies also suggested that if leasing companies are unwilling to alter their ads, they might be willing to speak to students to educate them about signing leases for off-Grounds housing.

Another of Schrimper’s strategies would encourage landlords to inform students who sign leases before Nov. 1 that there is still housing available in Charlottesville and that Council encourages them not to sign early. This information would be provided by landlords in the form of a document attached to each lease.

Tremblay noted, however, it would be hard to implement such a requirement with landlords and he was hesitant to agree with something that could not be completely enforced. Tremblay also commented that such a document may mean very little to students because leases already include several pages and most students do not read them before signing.

Schrimper also suggested the creation of a joint advertisement signed by landlords that would convey their support of the idea that students do no need to sign an early lease. Schrimper said he hoped this strategy would reassure students that signing leases before Nov. 1 was unnecessary more than running an advertisement without the signatures of the major landlords.

Another idea Schrimper suggested would be to put all of the off-Grounds housing data made available by the leasing companies into a spreadsheet and publish it as an advertisement in The Cavalier Daily each week. Tremblay disagreed with this suggestion and explained that a weekly description of the available off-Grounds housing would be inaccurate when compared to available Web sites that contain the same information and are updated every few minutes. Web sites such as brac.com and the University’s off-Grounds housing Web site are resources that can point students to available housing, Tremblay said.

Despite the initial concerns about including a document in leases in order to bring attention to the large amount of housing available to students, Woodard and Tremblay agreed to implement it. Schrimper said the document will be drafted by Council, the Office of Off-Grounds Housing and the landlords involved in the project.

Both landlords also said they were also willing to speak with students in order to help educate them about off-Grounds housing through forums created by Council. Schrimper said these off-Grounds housing forums will begin next September to inform students about the housing surplus available to them.

Finally, the landlords also agreed to participate with Council in the creation an ad that urges students not to sign leases before Nov. 1 signed by the participating landlords.

Student Council’s Student Arts Committee recently announced the creation of the Arts Education Program, through which committee members and other interested University student volunteers will teach Albemarle County elementary and middle school students about art.

This effort, Committee Chair Jenny Smith said, seeks to supplement both art education and education on a broader level.
“The arts are enriching to education generally,” Smith said. “When kids are creating their own piece of art, it gets kids interested in something that is educational but it adds to and diversifies their education.”

The topics that University students will teach through the program include art history, the work of specific artists, and the various themes, styles and techniques that exist in the artistic community, Smith said.

Committee members have divided into groups and created lesson plans based on one of the topics, Smith said.

“We have a wide group of interests within our committee,” Smith said, “Our members are knowledgeable in art history and art administration. We’re putting together a very substantive program and then bringing it to local public school system.”

Committee volunteers will visit local Charlottesville schools once every three weeks and will rotate to different schools throughout the semester, Smith said.

“I think it really exemplifies the Committee’s proactive effort to reach out to the local community,” Council President Matt Schrimper said.

The program also will allow committee members to give presentations to young Charlottesville students in after-school programs, such as the Boys & Girls Club of America, Smith said.

“We’re looking to work with volunteer after-school programs and also in regular classrooms,” Smith said, “We’re trying to get kids to become interested in art and taking what they’ve learned and supplementing it with their regular education.”

Andy Johnson, coordinator of Fine Arts and Gifted Education for Albemarle County Public Schools, said he thinks the program could be beneficial to students if it is planned appropriately.

“I really do think art is an area of emphasis for the county; it’s an area that helps foster problem-solving and creative thinking,” Johnson said, “but it depends on how it’s done and how it’s worked into the curriculum with the teachers.”

Johnson recommended that committee members work with the Albemarle County Framework for Quality Learning, a handbook on teaching in the classroom Albemarle teachers use, to ensure their lesson plans for the art presentations are as beneficial as possible for students.

“It would be helpful that anything they came in with was somehow connected to the framework,” Johnson said. “We’ve had mentoring programs in the past and I think I’ve seen those things work pretty well.”  The Arts Education Program will hold its first art presentation with the Boys & Girls Club of Charlottesville/Albemarle Nov. 20.

Though Charlottesville had its highest voter turnout ever this year, the percentage of registered voters who voted Nov. 4 was lower than expected, Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris said. As a result of last week’s voter turnout levels, Charlottesville will not be required to adjust its voting precincts for the next cycle of elections.

If more than 4,000 voters had turned out to cast their ballots in any of Charlottesville’s eight voting precincts, the city would have had to adjust its precinct boundaries, Charlottesville Deputy Registrar Dianne Gilliland said. Though the city saw 6,000 to 7,000 citizens register to vote before this election, the city did not reach the 4,000-person limit in any one of its precincts.

Gilliland said voter turnout throughout the city was just above 70 percent, up from 67 percent in 2004.

Norris added, however, that there are questions about the accuracy of these voter-turnout percentages. Some people may have registered to vote in Charlottesville and then moved out of town, he said, noting that this could cause “dead weight” in calculating voter turnout percentages if those voters were not taken off Charlottesville’s voter registration rolls.

Nevertheless, according to the Virginia State Board of Elections Web site, the 69.89-percent turnout of registered Charlottesville voters was less than the commonwealth’s voter turnout average of 73.96 percent.

Norris said a fear of long lines at polling places may have discouraged some citizens from voting. While some potential voters had a long wait in the morning, by the afternoon there were hardly any lines, he added. Another possible reason voter turnout was not as high as expected was that while voter turnout increased among Democrats, “enthusiasm for the Republican ticket was lower than it was four years ago,” Norris said.

Data show that Charlottesville voters did, in fact, have less enthusiasm overall for the Republican ticket this year than in 2004: According to the State Board of Elections Web site, 27 percent of Charlottesville voters supported the Republican presidential ticket in 2004, compared to 20.34 percent this year.

Dan Keyserling, Center for Politics deputy director of communications and former Cavalier Daily executive editor, said many Republicans might have stayed home “in a gesture of futility” because they did not think the McCain-Palin ticket would win. Keyserling also noted that turnout nationwide for the election was lower than expected.

“So much attention and emphasis was placed on the fact that this year was a transformational election that it seemed logical to assume that voter turnout would be unprecedentedly high,” Keyserling said.

Norris said while he is pleased that so many Charlottesville citizens voted in the election, he is concerned that about 30 percent of registered voters did not cast a ballot.

“We have to keep working to get those registered to actually come out and vote,” he said. He added that one of the lessons from this election — particularly from the Fifth District congressional contest between Tom Perriello, D, and Rep. Virgil Goode, R — is that every vote counts.

“One of the closest, if not the closest, congressional races in the country was here, and a tiny percentage of voters made the difference,” Norris said.

The Tuesday, Nov. 11 News article “Slutzky may run against Bell in 2009” quoted Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County as saying, “The transportation budget has grown; primarily the road budget has doubled in last 10 years.” The quote should have read: “The transportation budget has grown; the primary road budget has doubled in the last 10 years.” The Cavalier Daily regrets the error.

As the Virginia field hockey team awaited the seeding announcement for the NCAA Field Hockey Tournament in the depths of John Paul Jones Arena last night, there was a sense of madness in the air — November Madness. Though not highly publicized, it felt as if March had come early for the Cavaliers, as Virginia was anxious to see who it would be matched up with in the first round. The Cavaliers received their third straight bid under coach Michele Madison and are paired with in-state rival James Madison University in their 15th NCAA Tournament appearance.

Coincidently, the Cavaliers have already played JMU this season, losing a heartbreaker in Harrisonburg 1-0 in overtime. The No. 12 Cavaliers finished fourth in the ACC, while the No. 4 Dukes won the CAA Tournament, beating Old Dominion 1-0. The Cavaliers secured their at-large berth in the tournament with a second win against Duke last Thursday in the first round of the ACC Tournament.

“To beat a team like Duke two times in a row was big,” Madison said. “We were able to create multiple scoring opportunities to put them away.”

Despite losing to Maryland in the semifinals 3-2 in overtime, the team regained confidence that had been shaken by losses in five of its last seven games.

“It gave us a lot of confidence,” junior forward Traci Ragukas said. “We were losing close games and we knew we had to pick it up. It’s now or never. We know that we have to go and put everything out there now and that is what we did at Duke.”

The games against Duke and Maryland are just two of the challenges Virginia has had to face this season. Its schedule is rated as the toughest in the country according to fieldhockeycorner.com. Meanwhile, the Dukes’ strength of schedule is rated as 17th in the country.

“We played the No. 1 schedule in the country,” Madison said. “That has helped us get ready. We know we are ready, we have seen the best.”

Eight of Virginia’s opponents received bids to the tournament. Virginia and JMU have shared eight opponents this season, with both teams losing to Wake Forest and North Carolina.

“We know we can compete with the best teams in the country,” freshman midfielder Paige Selenski said. “We went into overtime with Maryland twice. We lost but we showed we can compete with anybody, it was a good confidence booster.”

The Cavaliers will have to keep up their stellar play of late to advance deep into the tournament. Selenski, who was named ACC Freshman of the Year Sunday after the conclusion of the ACC Tournament, will need to continue her high-scoring ways to propel the Cavaliers to victory. Another key player for the Cavaliers will be fifth-year senior goalkeeper Amy Desjadon, who has the experience and desire to carry the team. She has seen the majority of minutes in goal this season. On the other side of the field, the Cavaliers will have to deal the No. 1 goalkeeper in the country when they take on JMU. Junior Kelsey Cutchins leads the nation in goals against average and save percentage. Cutchins shut out the Cavaliers in their last meeting earlier in the season.

The winner of the Virginia-JMU game will play the winner of the Wake Forest-American game Sunday at 2 p.m.

The preseason basketball pundits ask again and again if the Virginia women’s basketball team — which tips off its season Friday at 7 p.m. against High Point at John Paul Jones Arena — can overcome the hole left by recent graduate Sharneé Zoll, as if she’s the only player the Cavaliers will be missing. Please! Let me tell you about another player Virginia will wish was still on its roster.

My experience with this player began last year. I attended nearly every Virginia women’s basketball home game last season, from the preseason blowout against Team Concept to the emotional senior night double-overtime victory against Georgia Tech. From the start, several players caught my attention: Monica Wright, with her dominant court presence, the now-graduated Zoll with her bullet passes and Aisha Mohammed with her ability to dominate the post and grab a rebound against anyone. But there was one player who didn’t really catch my attention until the Cavaliers’ matchup against the Richmond Spiders last Nov. 18.

Among the giant Aisha Mohammeds and Lyndra Littleses, I remember seeing a tiny guard. Someone passed the little guard the ball, and — as soon as she got it in her hands — the orange sphere leapt from her fingers and swished through the net. For a brief moment, she had a smile on her face so utterly convincing that even my own troubles evaporated. From that moment on, I knew I liked this No. 21, whoever she was.

As the season progressed and I became more familiar with the team, I learned this Cavalier was named Tara McKnight, that she was a team captain and a walk-on. I also learned that, as much as I enjoyed seeing Tara putting up threes on the court, she always played the backup role, getting only a few minutes per game, if any.

But Tara never seemed disappointed to be on the bench. In fact, she seemed just as fired up keeping seats warm as she did playing guard. She was always hopping off the bench and high-fiving her teammates during time-outs, smiling and encouraging them, cheering when they scored.

But every once in awhile, Debbie Ryan would put Tara in the game again, and Tara would be ready. It seemed every time her white sneakers hit the court, a new life sprang into the Cavaliers. The ball very often ended up in Tara’s hands a little bit outside of the 3-point arc, and nearly every time this happened, the ball soared into the hoop. Count it. Her season 3-point completion percentage was an astonishing .542, a number that topped the ACC by more than 10 percent.

I wasn’t the only one who cheered every time Tara sank a three: The whole crowd ate it up. When Morehead State played at JPJ last year, Tara sank three 3-pointers in all, and when that last one went in, the team might as well have just won the national championship. The rafters echoed with jubilant cheers and the PA sounded like a muffled cough in the roar of the crowd.

Not satisfied with being an afterthought, Tara continued to light the court up from long range whenever she received playing time. In the away game against Rider, she put up six 3-pointers and sunk five of them.

Tara is Virginia’s version of Rudy. Her story is an example of the power of the human spirit. That’s why it’s so appealing and universal. Tara overcame a small body and a small window of opportunity using her big dedication and big heart to play D-1 basketball at a top-25 program. With each of her successes, she forces us fans to ask ourselves what we might be able to conquer with a similarly big dedication and heart.

Every 3-point basket that Tara sank wasn’t just a score for her team; it was a score for the little people with big dreams everywhere. Her persistence and passion, whether she was patting a teammate on the back or celebrating a shot she just drained, empowered us and gave us something to emulate.

When the buzzer sounded on the Cavaliers’ loss to Old Dominion in the second round of the NCAA Tournament this past March, and Tara walked off the court as a Cavalier for the last time, the team didn’t just lose a leader and a motivator. It lost a little beacon of hope.

I think the team will miss Tara. You don’t make a player a team captain two years in a row, an honor bestowed on only 13 players in the program’s history, unless she’s an important component of the team. Senior point guard Britnee Millner said Tara had the most heart of anyone who played for Virginia last year and noted a team of 13 might have difficulty replacing the passion of one.

And I know that I’ll miss Tara, too. I always had a blast chanting “Put in Tara!” and seeing her remind everyone on the court and in the seats what makes sports important in the first place.

No. 21, Toots, T-Mac — whatever nickname you want to give her — constantly reminded Charlottesville that the secret to success isn’t making the most headlines but making the most of every opportunity and not letting your status as a walk-on prevent you from sinking lots of 3-pointers.

P.S. Today is Tara’s birthday! Maybe your present to her should be coming out this Friday to support her old team. Happy 24th, Tara!

It’s officially sweater weather. I’m trading in my shorts and sandals for slightly warmer wear. The rich spectrum of fall foliage now lines the streets instead of the skyline, and I actually had frost on my car the other morning. The return of the chill means only one thing.
Basketball is back.

Midnight Madness has come and gone, the last exhibition games are winding down, and I’m seeing less and less of my basketball manager friends. In only four days, our Hoos kick things off at JPJ against the high-octane VMI Keydets.

But this column isn’t about what to watch for this season in Charlottesville. It’s not about how the Hoos will cope in the first season post-Singletary or which young guns and newcomers will contribute the most this year. It almost was, until I checked the schedule for the EA SPORTS Maui Invitational.

I love the Maui Invitational. Coach K and Tom Izzo in Acapulco shirts and leis, the nation’s most elite players squaring off in a gym that’s smaller than the ones most of them had in high school — it’s quite a spectacle and a great kick-off to the season. But there is one game in particular this year that I can’t wait to watch, even if I am rooting for 10 broken legs and a 0-0 tie:

UNC versus Chaminade.

My disdain for both these schools knows almost no bounds. It’s genetic, I guess, something I inherited from Dad. We use “Carolina ref” to express our displeasure with anything from blown calls to bad traffic. Since before I was born, Chaminade has been paired, in my household, with the same epithet Bucky Dent receives in Southie.

Why Chaminade, you ask? (Presumably immediately after “Chami-who?”) What could the Silverswords of the NCAA’s Division II possibly have done to incur such wrath? The answer, my friends, lies way back in 1982.

It was the Year of Ralph. Behind the gargantuan Ralph Sampson, the reigning national Player of the Year and recipient of the Naismith Award, our Hoos had knocked off Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown and the immortal Phi Slama Jama dynasty at Houston. Rick Carlisle and Othell Wilson formed a backcourt duo among the best in the country, quick sharpshooters who kept defenses honest and off of Sampson inside.

Head coach Terry Holland had taken the boys across the Pacific, all the way to Tokyo, to play in an early season tournament that showcased just how good the defending ACC regular-season champions were. On the way back home, they were scheduled for a stop in Hawaii to take on an NAIA team from a school with only 800 students: Chaminade.

In the weeks before the game, university officials had been discussing the envelopment of Chaminade into the University of Hawaii system. But in one night, during the course of one 40-minute game, all that changed.

Sampson had anywhere from 8 inches to a foot on the players covering him. Thing was, there were three or four of them every time he turned around. Chaminade’s “secret weapon” was a Virginia product who had played Sampson in high school. For one perfect storm of a game, the Hoos couldn’t hit their outside shots, and Chaminade couldn’t miss. When all was said and done, Chaminade 77, Virginia 72.

Throughout the years, explanations for what happened that night have trickled in by bits and pieces. One is that Ralph had the flu or some other illness that he’d picked up in Japan. Another says a few players had enjoyed the Hawaiian nightlife a bit too much and were sluggish the next day. Who knows, maybe Holland picked up a cursed Tiki doll on the beach.

Whatever the reasons, whatever the excuse, that game will live in infamy as the greatest upset in the history of college basketball. Watch the Maui tournament. Without fail, they’ll make reference to the biggest win in Chaminade’s history, the game that is the very reason the tournament exists at all.

In terms of purely a basketball game, all history aside, Carolina versus Chaminade shouldn’t be much of a game. UNC has Tyler “Psycho T” Hansbrough, winner of 11 national Player of the Year awards, including the Naismith. Its backcourt is stacked: Bobby Frasor, Danny Green, Wayne Ellington, and Ty Lawson all return from last year’s squad. They’re the first unanimous AP preseason number one ever. They were ACC regular-season champions last year, and everyone expects the same, if not more, from them this year.

Sound familiar?

There was a volleyball practice early this season, before any of the preseason tournaments, whose conclusion provided a small window into some of the characteristics that would come to define Virginia’s team this year.

First there was coach Lee Maes pushing the players through five sets of a strenuous running drill. All year long, Maes has preached that repetition is the key to building strength and technique.

Next there were the players, despite being exhausted from the practice, eagerly talking and joking during stretches. The team’s camaraderie and positive attitude has remained constant throughout the up-and-down season.

But perhaps the most striking example characteristic of the season happened as the team was cooling down. One player spoke to the team as a confident leader, and each of the other players listened intently. It was senior middle blocker Shannon Davis, a captain and four-year starter for the Cavaliers, who has remained an experienced and vocal member of this year’s squad.

“[Shannon’s] been a constant leader on and off the court for us,” Maes said. “One of the things we always can count on is that she always makes others around her better.”

Davis, hailing from Austin, Texas, is the smallest of the team’s middle blockers and does not have the type of frame to allow her to put up the type of explosive numbers that players like junior outside hitter Lauren Dickson or sophomore middle blocker Sydney Hill do. Instead, Davis’ skill on the court comes from efficiency, technique and dependability. She leads the team in hitting percentage and is one of only five players in the program’s history to hit both 1,000 kills and put up 400 blocks during her career. She has offered production on the court throughout the years, but her production off the court, through mentoring underclassmen, will be felt by the team for years to come.

Her role is “to keep being a leader and to keep setting a good example to keep the program going well,” Davis said, “and just to have fun, just to enjoy every moment of it.”

At Westlake High School, Davis led her team to two state titles and went into college ranked as one of the top recruits of her class. She decided to come to Virginia and she said she does not regret the decision.

“Literally the whole place is just an amazing experience,” Davis said. “The school is so, so amazing — the education you get and the people, and the people we’ve had on the team; I’ve made lifelong friendships.”

Davis’s senior season has seen some great moments for the team but also a good share of disappointment. The team currently sits at ninth in conference, far below the fifth place that preseason ACC polls predicted the Cavaliers to finish at and even further below the first place that was the team’s goal. But Davis hasn’t given up on the season yet and said she and the Cavaliers believe they can win each of the five matches remaining on the schedule.

“We just want to win out and we know we can,” Davis said. “[Saturday] we stepped up, and we played great, so we just want to continue that.”

After giving her all to Virginia’s volleyball team for the past four years, Davis’ journey as a college athlete will soon end. But she has plenty of plans for her life beyond graduation.

“I’m taking a year off,” Davis said, “and plan on eventually going to physical therapy school.”

Regardless of where she ends up, Davis will bring with her skills that made her a role model on and off the court for the Cavaliers for so long — the type of skills that apply not only to sports but to life in general.

“She is a giver,” Maes said. “She communicates well and her actions really become the example that everybody looks to.”

The Virginia wrestling team will hit the ground running this weekend at the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, competing in its first set of dual meets this season.

The Cavaliers started their season off on a high note last weekend at the Michigan State Open, where seven Virginia wrestlers placed. This weekend, they face highly-touted Big Ten schools head-on; Virginia will take part in its first three individual matches of the season against Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan State Saturday.

Expectations are high, as the Cavaliers achieved an unusual NCAA preseason ranking, coming in at No. 23. The competition is also stiff, as both No. 9 Illinois and No. 13 Wisconsin harbor legitimate NCAA-title hopes. Michigan State also received votes in the preseason poll. These early tests are indicative of the team’s rugged schedule, but the Virginia wrestlers remain optimistic.

“It’s exciting,” senior Rocco Caponi said. “Everyone on the team is a true competitor. The harder the competition, the more we are going to enjoy it. It gives you really good motivation to train.”

With the high ranking and tough schedule — regarded as the most competitive in program history — also comes pressure to live up to the hype, something Virginia wrestlers may be unaccustomed to. This is the first time the wrestling program has ever been ranked in the USA Today/InterMat poll. Still, the team is not shying away and has high expectations.

“It’s always good to get a high ranking, I’m proud of the team for that,” Caponi said. “One of the main goals is to win an ACC title this year. We came real close last year. The other main goal is to get every person to NCAAs this year.”

Coach Steve Garland also expressed optimism regarding the team’s goals.

“[Expectations] are very high,” Garland said. “This is my third season and we have been building something from the ground up … This year we set our standards even higher, so now we are ranked 23rd. We are jumping for joy but at the end of day we have to have results. That is my only focus this year.”

Those results will be hard to come by, so the team has been working extremely hard. This increased intensity, along with the grueling schedule, poses possible health issues.

“Our biggest challenge this year will be dealing with injuries,” Garland said. “We have kicked up preseason. You always want to improve or else you are moving backwards. We made preseason harder, we made the schedule harder and we made the practices harder.”

Hopefully, these measures will be beneficial. The team feels it is right on the edge of becoming an elite program.

“We will see,” Garland said. “We are [going to] see what we are really made of. Last year, we were beating good, solid teams, but we weren’t beating great teams. This year, my goal is to beat these great teams.”

This stress on beating the best has the team excitedly looking forward to the fight for the ACC Championship and, ultimately, putting in a good showing at the NCAA Championship meet.

“The biggest challenge is going to be the NCAAs because you get the best wrestlers there,” Caponi said.

Garland is putting a lot of emphasis on how his team fares in these final challenges.

“We get our best guys in the best matches possible against the best in the country, so the preparation for the end of the year is there,” Garland said. “At the end of the year, come NCAAs, it’s ‘I better place or it’s not good enough.’”

For Garland and his team, all roads lead to the NCAAs.

“I don’t care what our record is during the year,” Garland said. “To me all that matters is getting All-Americans and hopefully a national championship.”